Forward
by Asidian
Summary: Matt has issues with people leaving. In the awful days that follow Foggy walking out the door, he's afraid he's lost his best friend for good. (The "A Lot to Unlearn" series: Hands, An Act of Abandonment, Forward, and Hindsight's 20/20)


Author's Notes: This fic takes place in the same continuity as "Hands" and "An Act of Abandonment." You can read them first for more background information, but this is set right after Nelson v Murdock and can be read without any further context.

Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading and commenting. You all are amazing! 3

* * *

Forward

* * *

His apartment smells like blood.

The copper tang of it has seeped into the couch, and there are spots on the carpet; he knows because the smell is heavy from the floor. Every time Matt takes a breath, he tastes metal, thick on his tongue. Every time he shifts, the pain in his ribs jangles through him like the disjointed scraps of conversation on a crowded street.

Karen's balloon floats where he left it, a displacement of air. It bobs and dips at the end of its string, gently, whenever Matt shifts.

The refrigerator contains two bottles of beer, one bottle of water, two eggs, and a sample-sized jar of jam. Matt drinks the beer and the water, and that first night he stands propped against the stove, barely upright, to fry the eggs. Gas and cooking oil permeate the apartment, then the savory scent of scrambled eggs when they hit the metal surface with a hiss.

He leans against the counter when they're finished – eats them there in the kitchen, from the pan, with a spoon.

Then he scrubs the dish in scalding water, scrubs and scrubs with the cheap sponge that feels like raw asphalt on one side. He keeps going for a long time, long after it's clean, until his fingers sting like they're going to blister.

This, Matt tells himself, is why he doesn't cook. His apartment will smell like eggs for a week, eggs layered under the blood.

The thought makes the back of his throat sting, as if he's going to vomit. Matt swallows, and swallows again. He puts his head down on the counter, on top of his arms, and he doesn't move for a long time.

By the second day, the balloon trails its string in a lazy swoop, hanging half against the floor. It's begun to slowly deflate, the smooth surface starting to collapse.

Matt drinks water from the tap, glass after glass, because Claire says that he needs to replace lost fluids. He can taste trace amounts of chemicals when he concentrates too hard: bromate and chlorine, the old-metal tang of a rusted pipe.

He drags himself into the shower, because he can still smell the warehouse on him: gasoline, and ground-in dirt, traces of Fisk's expensive cologne. He lets the spray sluice over him until it goes cold, until goosebumps stand on his arms and he almost believes that the water dripping from his chin is just water.

Then Matt changes into something new, a heavy shirt lined with fleece, sweatpants, thick socks. He sits on the couch, and his fingers trace the shirt's lining, back and forth, forth and back. He's always liked the way it feels on his skin, plush and yielding.

Matt's coffee table is still in splinters, so he sets his phone carefully on the arm of the couch, in easy reach.

Just in case.

* * *

The office is empty.

There's no _tap_ , _tap_ of Foggy's foot against the baseboard under his desk when he's bored, rubber on wood. There's no rustle of paper, no industrious scratch of graphite on notebook, no rapid staccato of fingers on a keyboard. The smell of Foggy's lunch four days ago, a Big Mac with extra pickles, haunts the halls like a ghost.

Matt can hear heartbeats through the walls, even and unperturbed, from the financial office next door, but the only one that still beats in Nelson and Murdock belongs to Matt.

He keeps himself busy. Even without clients, there's plenty to do.

There's an office that only one person still wants, so Matt takes it upon himself to prepare the paperwork. He notes the legal address, prints out three copies in standard text instead of Braille. He dutifully attaches the property description.

When that's finished, he finds his copy of the partnership agreement – buried in a folder at the very back of his filing cabinet, every line dry and professional.

He doesn't think about the night they wrote it, sitting at Foggy's kitchen table, fingers greasy from the plate of chicken strips between them. He doesn't think about how many times they veered wildly off-topic, talking women or music or the bench opinion from that case in Texas the week before. He doesn't think about how they nearly didn't write it at all.

They'd both been so sure that the partnership would last.

Matt's glad he has it now. It means he can set everything in order, leave space for a signature and let Foggy review it at his leisure. The least Matt can do, after everything, is make it easy for his partner to cut ties.

So he arranges the paperwork carefully, lines up the edges, adds paperclips where they're needed. He peels off a post-it and sticks it to the front. "Foggy," he writes, in pen, mindful of the legibility. He presses hard enough that he can feel the lines, traces over them when he's done, to make sure they can be read.

When he's finished, he thinks: it's legal paperwork, you idiot. On the heels of that thought comes: his _friends_ call him Foggy.

Matt strips the post-it off with hands that aren't quite steady. "Attn: Franklin Nelson," is what he writes the second time, and he checks the lines of it, fingers over ink, to be sure.

Then he opens his drawer, wheels in ancient metal tracts, squealing and catching. He's reaching for the box of manila envelopes in the back, but something snags on the meaty part of his thumb midway.

It's blocky, cheap plastic, and the pads of Matt's fingers search the form of it: three horns, a ridge, and a thick, blunted tail. It's one of the little dinosaurs that traveled with them from Landman and Zack, there in a row with four companions.

Matt knows, suddenly, how they'll end.

They'll stand sentinel on his counter beside a clumsy paper bracelet, and Matt can keep all of his regrets in one place. The thought hollows him out inside – leaves him cold and empty, like a church at midnight.

He leans his head into his hands, and he forgets about the envelope.

It's five full minutes before he puts the paperwork away, in the back of his filing cabinet, in a folder with a Braille label that reads, "Unfinished."

* * *

His apartment smells like eggs and blood, and Matt stands in front of the refrigerator like he expects there to be anything but a sample-sized jar of jam.

He thinks about calling the Thai place on the corner – thinks that the scent of green curry will wash out most anything – coriander and cumin and kaffir lime, powerful and distinct. His stomach twists a little, in favor of the decision, anticipating jasmine rice and the chill tang of cucumber salad.

But the last time he went to pick up food, Foggy was with him, hand on his elbow, irreverent and half-drunk. They were talking about camping – how neither of them had ever been, how it was easier to burn marshmallows over a candle anyway, how it sounded like an awful time, and hey Murdock, let's do it, let's go, my uncle's got a tent I can borrow.

Matt makes tea, instead.

In the other room, the balloon hovers just above the ground, mostly crumpled.

Matt's surprised it lasted that long.

* * *

It breaks like a fever, all at once, in the familiar closeness of his father's gym.

Fumbled words, all new terms, and then suddenly they're lurching forward again. It's stop-and-go; they're clumsy, in a way they never have been.

But Matt fishes the paperwork out of the "Unfinished" folder and throws it away.

And the next time Foggy comes over, he opens the fridge for a beer and says, "Jesus, dude, _jam_? We're calling out for Thai."

Matt's right, it turns out. The spices cover up just about everything.


End file.
